I see many on the left in absolute panic and scrambling to defend their savior. Will they be able to pull him from the brink of destruction? Some in the media are trying to rewrite history before it is history. Everything they believe in, is at stake.

Case in point, I cannot remember being attacked so vehemently from the trolls on Twitter, as when I posted this picture yesterday of President Reagan holding his own umbrella. All I said was “no words needed.” It seems to have hit a nerve. It’s not like I posted this very telling one of Obama with a marine holding the umbrella for him with some snide remark. 

As this week comes to a close, I am left to wonder and worry about what will be written in the history books my grandchildren will study.  I guess that will also depend upon whether we are able to reclaim our schools.  I know that we are watching history in the making, but to what outcome? What will be The Obama Legacy?

J.B. Williams writes: “Obama’s Federal Gestapo is Going Down” with a very good outline of all of the scandals. He names many of those who are complicit, in the numerous  acts of treason against We The People.

J.B. says:

Our problem is as follows, and this has been the problem since 20 January 2009…

Barack Hussein Obama MUST be held fully accountable for numerous blatant acts of treason, period. If this does not happen, America is finished forever. This by itself constitutes a “constitutional crisis…” but is again, only the tip of the iceberg.

Due to the massive conspiracy surrounding what can only be titled The Obama Crisis, and all of the key figures involved in that conspiracy to “fundamentally change America,” no one in the constitution[al] chain of succession to the Oval Office can be entrusted with that office today.

He goes on to ask:

Is this enough for the average American to wake up and get engaged yet? If it isn’t, America isn’t America anymore and it will never be America ever again.

And then I cringe, grimace, and grit my teeth, remembering the clip that Bill O’Reilly ran this week of  a producer on the streets of New York City, asking passers-by about the White House scandals. Oh my God, we still have college students who do not know the name of the Vice President!  You have to watch that clip if you did not see it when it aired. I am astounded that the people who live here, in the only really free country in the world, take their freedom for granted to such a degree. Gallup says: “Americans’ Attention to IRS, Benghazi Stories Below Average.” I am terrified!

Then I remember the marches on DC and the pictures that did not make the main stream media, nor even Fox News. The numbers that were falsely reported. If we did it again, would the coverage be different? There are some in the media who are asking questions now. What does it take to wake up the sheeple? Could we pull it off again in even greater numbers?

I do not know the answer to any of the questions I have asked here. I do believe this is do or die time. Time to pull out all of the stops. It is time to talk to all of those people you have been afraid to approach. Ask them to please just read about what is happening and form their own opinion. Do not accept excuses like “I am not very political.” Make them understand that they at the very least, need to know what is happening. Talk to your pastors, your doctors, the people who call you trying to sell you something on the phone. Buy the t-shirts and bumper stickers and wear them. If you do not find one you like, then go to Cafe Press and make your own. Tea parties, regroup and fight! Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country!

As I am writing this, I received an email from one of the most effective groups now working to restore our Constitutional Republic, The U.S. Patriots Union. If you are not a member, go join!  The membership fee is $29.00 per year. Donate more if you can. Become a Charter Member! I have permission to reprint the email blast here:

ALL MEMBERS… It has taken us five years of sustained efforts in numerous strategic initiatives to arrive at the moment in history and now, it is time to GO BIG or GO HOME! Since we decided to work in focused tangible strategies aimed at Restoring our Constitutional Republic, we have gained a lot of ground… We have ignited the fire for individual and states rights at the state level via State Legislative Committees in numerous states working on the Constitutional Balance of Powers. We exposed the TRUTH about Benghazi last October, now a raging inferno in ongoing investigations that threat the Obama administration. We delivered evidence of IRS witch hunts to friends in the press two years ago, now making headlines all over the world and threatening the Obama administration. We established that Barack Hussein Obama is a fraud from top to bottom and that he is an anti-American infiltrator. We served NOTICE to ALL 50 states to stop the fraud via ballot access in 2012. We served ALL members of Congress in a demand to STOP the 2012 election fraud by objecting to election results and opening a full investigation. We started it all with a Veterans Day rally on the Washington Mall in DC in 2011 and a DEMAND to Restore the Constitutional Republic and we have worked every day since to force that process forward. and despite the fact that we have yet to receive the financial support needed to launch it, we are prepared to challenge the entire Obama Administration and Washington DC on ALL of their criminal acts via a Criminal Complaint. NOW, we stand ready to use The North American Law Center to force all congressional investigations against the Obama regime into the open via a Special Grand Jury. Everything we have done over the last five years was strategically designed to bring us to this moment in history… OBAMA’S GESTAPO MUST GO DOWN! NO organizations in the country have been so focused on tangible strategies, or so successful in the carrying out of those strategies, none! NOW, IT IS TIME TO GO BIG OR GO HOME! All of this work has been carried out by a small number of our members and funded by less than 10% of our member base…. THAT’S A CRIME! We MUST have the support of our members to finish the tasks we have started and make everything we have done up to this point count! It will take serious funding to finish this job…. but we have arrived at the moment when Obama is in a weakened state and so is every criminal in DC who has been involved in the theft of our once great nation. WE MUST GO BIG OR WE WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO GO HOME…. IT’S TIME TO CLOSE THE DEAL ON THIS TRAGIC CHAPTER IN AMERICAN HISTORY…. WE MUST ALL STEP UP AND MAKE IT HAPPEN NOW. RENEW - RECRUIT - DONATE TODAY! Be the solution!

OBAMA’S FEDERAL GESTAPO IS GOING DOWN

People have to be removed from office, charged with crimes, put in prison and made an example of… and no matter how difficult it is the American people must insist that our government be cleansed of all frauds, infiltrators and criminals. Yes, the American people have allowed this tragedy to build to a point when resolving this mess will itself be very messy. But not resolving this disaster will be even messier and disasters are not like wine, they do not get better with time. FULL DETAILS – TIME TO ACT!

BENGHAZI: WHERE ARE GEN. HAM AND ADM. GAOUETTE?

It’s now public knowledge that the ever evolving official administration stories on Benghazi are all bold faced lies. It’s clear that the four Americans who were brutally murdered in Benghazi did not have to die. What’s not clear yet, is who is responsible for these murders? Nothing the Obama administration has told the people about Benghazi is true… but who is responsible? General Carter Ham and Admiral Charles M. Gaouette know the answer to this question. Where are Ham and Gaouette today? Why hasn’t Issa’s investigative committee called these decorated Military officers to testify before the committee investigating Benghazi? FULL STORY

Also something to share, in celebration of Armed Forces Day yesterday and remembrance of those who fell at Benghazi: (h/t Sue From NM, @sue51684) who relates the Author as unknown:

U.S. Attorney David B. Barlow, of Utah, walks off following an interview at his office Thursday, May 16, 2013, in Salt Lake City. U.S. authorities in Idaho said they have arrested Fazliddin Kurbanov, a man from Uzbekistan accused of conspiring with a designated terrorist organization in his home country and helping scheme to use a weapon of mass destruction. Credit: AP

Cloward and Piven is in full force with Progressive-gate everywhere you look these days. Obama has the country thoroughly embroiled in a Trifecta of scandals encompassing tapping 120 AP phone lines, other media and the Senate cloakroom (oh hell, he’s bugging everyone these days); ignoring the dead heroes of Benghazigate (whom Obama and Clinton allowed to be murdered) and the most egregious of all, using the IRS as a political weapon to an extent never seen before and then denying he had anything to do with it (playing Sargent Schultz to a tee with Holder mimicking his Oscar winning performance). I don’t know whether to pull the covers over my head in exhaustion and embarrassment or to pop some popcorn and watch the whole progressive mess unravel.

While all this circus is being dramatically staged in Congress with much huffing and puffing, but little in the way of repercussions, other ‘interesting’ events have been occurring in America. Some even in my state of Idaho (surprise, surprise, surprise!).

First, let’s look at the 7 young Chemical Engineering students who were caught trespassing in Boston (yes, the very same Boston where we just had a terrorist attack) in the middle of the night at the Quabbin Reservoir, where Boston draws their drinking water from. They were from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Singapore (Johnny… what are all three known for? Islam! Ding! Ding! Ding!). But, don’t you worry… They were found guilty of only trespassing — boys will be boys and girls (5 men and 2 women), don’t ya know. Don’t pay attention to their Chemical Engineering degrees or their country of origin or their religion. I’m sure it is just innocent hijinks. But I won’t be moving to Boston any time soon (read “ever”). This is according to the FBI, who I totally believe (not). The authorities claim there was never a threat to the water supply. Just like there was never a threat to the Boston Marathon and those nightly low flying aircraft over the area are probably just testing for pollen. Boston, you’ve got a real problem. It’s a problem we are seeing all across America… The authorities think Americans are morons and actually believe their lies. Nothing to see here – ever.

On to Idaho. This is ironic. I deliberately moved to this state because it was a conservative haven and about as safe as you could get. Sigh. Thanks to Obama’s immigration policy of ‘we’ll accept everyone, but those who should be here,’ we have caught an Uzbekistan Muslim in Boise who is here legally and gleefully plotting terrorist attacks. He didn’t get around to killing lots of Americans yet, so no biggie and definitely not in the major news cycle. Move along dupes.

From Reuters:

U.S. officials charged an Uzbek citizen in Idaho with providing bomb-making knowledge and other support to an Islamist militant group, knowing that it would be used in an attack, authorities said on Thursday.

Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, a national of Uzbekistan living legally in Idaho, was arrested in Boise and faces a three-count grand jury indictment in Idaho and a single-count indictment in Utah, prosecutors said.

They said Kurbanov provided information and money to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The group supports establishing strict Islamic rule in Uzbekistan.

This scum was probably spreading Shariah crappola in Boise and everywhere he could while dreaming of dead infidels nightly. He also believes in a Caliphate which is hardly surprising.

A little background on Uzbekistan from The Blaze:

Although the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan started in the 1990s with the stated aim of overthrowing the Uzbek regime and establishing an Islamic government, its goals have expanded to creating a broader Central Asian caliphate.

The movement’s fighters have a presence in Afghanistan’s northern provinces and in Pakistan’s Waziristan province. U.S. and Afghan officials say al-Qaeda has been building ties with the IMU.

Last year, an Uzbek named Ulugbek Kodirov was sentenced to a minimum 15 years in prison in Alabama for plotting to shoot President Barack Obama while on the campaign trail. Kodirov pleaded guilty, saying he was acting at the behest of the IMU.

Did it every occur to our governmental jack-wagons, that being from this particular bed of Islamic radicalism should preclude him from getting citizenship? Or, is it fast-track citizenship for all Muslims these days? No discrimination due to religion or terroristic tendencies.

Did no one suspect this guy? Were you too afraid to speak up? Someone evidently turned him in and good for them. But notice, the officials are brushing it off as a semi-’lone wolf’ incident. I highly doubt that. In fact, it is rumored by residents there that the apartment building is chock full of “refugees”. Sounds like a ticking time bomb to me. A Russian radical Islamist is planning violent Jihad by himself? Has anyone, ANYONE, looked into his family there, his connections, his damned friends?! Hello! Remember Boston!! Gee, that was sooo long ago, we seem to have already forgotten. What you don’t see in the news is all the thwarted terror attacks going on the US – all over the place. And I would wager a fair number that have happened and have been covered up. Do we really not care until it is us? Are we that self-centered? The guy wasn’t protesting potatoes, people, he was plotting to kill innocent individuals. He also had ‘unnamed’ co-conspirators (sort of nixing the ‘lone wolf’ theme). Mull that over, Boise.

From Walid Shoebat:

If Americans cared about terrorists whose plans are thwarted, the media would no longer be able to deny the one common thread – Islam.

As for Uzbekistan, Islamic fundamentalism has been on the rise there since the end of the Cold War. As Americans cheered the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Soviet satellite countries, Islam incubated.

Consider the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a consortium of twelve nation states that sought independence after the fall of the Soviet Union. Chechnya – homeland of the Tsarnaevs – attempted to break from the Soviets in 1991 but Russia would not allow it. Now that Americans are becoming familiar with Islamic terrorism from that region, Russia’s reticence to grant that independence appears a bit more warranted now than it did then.

Chechnya was one region that Russia simply was not willing to relinquish. In hindsight, the Chechen rebels’ propensity for violent terrorism almost certainly played a role in that decision. – The Case FOR Islamophobia, p. 355

While Uzbekistan does not have the uncontrollable problem with Islamic fundamentalism that Chechnya has, it is a nation whose history lies with the Turkish Ottoman Empire, as does the history of Kazakstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikstan, and Turkmenistan – all members of the CIS.

In short there are two story lines that are being overlooked relative to the arrest of Kurbanov. One is that he is allegedly a thwarted Islamic terrorist. The other has to do with the country he is from.

Americans better wake up fast before a car is parked in front of a place packed with Americans and the car trunk is packed with a nuke. It’s coming.

We are way past the time where we can just work and play like nothing is going on. We better wake up to the evil around us and among us before it swallows us whole. All of us including our children.

The following is from Jihad Watch with Robert Spencer’s comments:

“Idaho man pleads not guilty in alleged Uzbekistan terror plot,” from the Associated Press, May 17 (thanks to Darcy):

BOISE, Idaho — An Uzbekistan national living in Boise said little during his first court appearance Friday on federal charges that he gave support, cash and other resources to help a recognized terrorist group in his home country plan a terrorist attack there.

Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, was arrested Thursday during a raid of his small apartment. Prosecutors have offered few details of their investigation or Kurbanov’s alleged role in helping a militant group back home. He was charged in Idaho as well as Utah as a result of an extensive investigation into his activities late last year and this year.

Kurbanov pleaded not guilty during the hearing that lasted about 20 minutes. Kurbanov — with a short, cropped beard, dark hair and wearing a jail jumpsuit — spoke only a few words to the judge, their communication complicated by language differences.

Federal officials said they will enlist the help of an interpreter when Kurbanov, who lists Uzbek as his first language and Russian as his second in court documents, appears Tuesday for his detention hearing.

Until then, he will be held in the Ada County Jail. Kurbanov said he couldn’t pay for an attorney, so federal public defender Richard Rubin was appointed to handle the case.

“Given his arrest, we believe any potential threat he posed has been contained,” said U.S Attorney Wendy Olson, who declined to comment on whether federal agents are pursuing additional arrests. Their investigation is ongoing, she said.

Kurbanov has been living in the United States legally, but his immigration status is unclear. He said he had a job driving trucks in Boise and listed his only assets as a couple of used cars and a small amount of cash in checking and savings accounts.

His trial on the three counts filed in Idaho is scheduled for July 2.

Olson said she has seen Internet comments blaming Idaho’s Muslim community, something she called inappropriate. She said her office enjoys “outstanding partnerships” with its members.

“These charges shouldn’t be seen as a reflection on that community,” Olson said.

This caveat is obligatory nowadays, and there is nothing particularly wrong with it except that it reflects the influence of Islamic supremacist advocacy groups like the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which push the fiction that Muslims in the U.S. are in danger of a large-scale “backlash” after jihad attacks occur or jihad plots are revealed.

The Idaho indictment charges Kurbanov with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and possession of an unregistered explosive device.

It alleges that between August and May, Kurbanov knowingly conspired with others to provide support and resources, including computer software and money, to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the U.S. has identified as a terrorist organization. The group’s purpose is to overthrow the government of Uzbekistan, said David B. Barlow, U.S. attorney in Utah. The alleged co-conspirators were not named.

The indictment also alleges Kurbanov provided material support to terrorists, knowing that the help was to be used in preparation for a plot involving the use of a weapon of mass destruction. On Nov. 15, Kurbanov possessed an explosive device, consisting of a series of parts intended to be converted into a bomb, according to the indictment. Those parts included a hollow hand grenade, a hobby fuse, aluminum powder, potassium nitrate and sulfur.

A separate federal grand jury in Utah charged Kurbanov with distributing information about explosives, bombs and weapons of mass destruction. For 10 days in January, Kurbanov taught and demonstrated how to make an “explosive, destructive device, and weapon of mass destruction,” the document states.

The Utah indictment, which will be handled separately after the Idaho prosecution is resolved, alleges that Kurbanov provided written recipes for how to make improvised explosive devices and went on instructional shopping trips in Utah showing what items are necessary to buy in order to make the devices, Barlow said. Kurbanov also showed Internet videos on the topic, Barlow said.

The prosecutor declined to say whom Kurbanov took on the shopping trips in Utah but said that information will come out as the case proceeds.

The indictment from Utah also alleges that Kurbanov intended that the videos, recipes, instructions and shopping trips be used to make an explosive device for the “bombings of a place of public use, public transportation system, and infrastructure facility.”…

I’m sorry, this does reflect badly on the Muslim community as a whole. They are not policing, condemning or hell, slapping the backs of their heads when it comes to their terrorist agenda.

This miscreant evidently appeared in court last Friday and could get 20 years. First, that is too light of a sentence for him — I prefer death. Second, he wouldn’t even get the 20 years. They’ll slap his hands and give him a light sentence and probation or he’ll get sent home. Either way, he’ll live to bomb another day. The enemy is among us, even in Idaho. Whether America accepts it or not, we are at war with radical Islam and we have a President who is on the wrong side.

Alice Palmer

Alice Palmer is a Chicago based academic, socialist activist and former friend, employer and political ally of Barack Obama. She employed Obama as her Chief of Staff during her failed run for Congress in the mid-1990s. She introduced Obama to people of influence in Chicago before he “took over” her Illinois State Senate seat.

It was Alice Palmer who took Obama to the famous meeting in the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, where Obama launched his political career.

Alice Palmer and her husband Buzz Palmer established the Black Press Institute in Chicago circa 1982. In a 1986 interview with the Communist Party USA paper People’s Daily World, Alice Palmer explained BPI’s role in influencing decision makers such as the Congressional Black Caucus. The organization was an outlet for communist propaganda.

Its publication carried articles such as “Socialism is the Only Way Forward” and “Is Black Bourgeoise Ideology Enough?”

In 1983, Alice Palmer traveled to Czechoslovakia to the Soviet front World Peace Council’s Prague Assembly.

At the time, Alice Palmer was an Executive Board member of the Communist Party USA-dominated U.S. Peace Council.

Of the 48 U.S. Peace Council officers in 1983-1985, at least ten: Sara Staggs, Rob Prince, Michael Myerson, Frank Chapman, Otis Cunningham, James Jackson, Atiba Mbiwan, Pauline Rosen, Jose Soler and Denise Young, were known Communist Party USA members.

A further eight were involved in the 1990s in a Communist Party splinter group – Committees of Correspondence. They were Gus Newport, Mark Solomon, Linda Coronado, Barbara Lee, Kevin Lynch, Anne Mitchell, Arlene Prigoff and Alice Palmer herself.

The trip was organized by International Organization of Journalists executive Don Rojas, the American educated former Press Secretary to Grenada’s late communist leader, Maurice Bishop, in conjunction with the Black Press Institute, the National Alliance of Black Journalists and the National Newspaper Publishers Association – the U.S.’s largest organization of owners of black newspapers.

The trip was extraordinary because we were able to sit down with our counterparts and with the seats of power in three major capitals-Prague, Berlin and Moscow. We visited with foreign ministers, we talked with the editors of the major newspapers in these three cities…

It was a very unusual trip because we were given access… Every effort was made to give us as much as we asked for… We came back feeling that we could speak very well about the interest of the socialist countries in promoting peace.

In Czechoslovakia, Alice Palmer and other delegate officials were present at the Czech Foreign Ministry, including Dr. Vladimir Polachek, head of the Department of Basic Political Questions and Dr. Rudolf Jabubik, Deputy head of the 6th Territorial Department (including the U.S.).

In March 1986, Alice Palmer covered the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Congress in Moscow for the Black Press Institute.

Palmer, as Editor of the Black Press Review, was elected International Organization of Journalists’ Vice President for North America at the organization’s 10th Congress, October 20-23 1986, in Prague Czechoslovakia. She also traveled to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria during the same trip.

The IOJ was a Soviet front operation based in Prague until its expulsion by the Czech government in 1995.

In a People’s Weekly World interview with Chicago Communist Party USA member Mike Giocondo, Alice Palmer explained the International Organization of Journalists’ concept of media “fairness:”

Giocondo: What is the IOJ’s approach to the question of fairness in the media? How does it relate to the concept of “objective journalism” which is stressed here in the US?

Palmer: The IOJ believes that there must be fairness in media, which is called for in a proposal for a New Information Order, which the IOJ supports. Fairness is not an abstraction, because journalists are not abstractions; we live in a world, we live in our particular societies, and therefore are caught up in whatever the dynamics of the situation are. This concept of “Objective journalism” that is taught in journalism schools… is not possible… What we are striving for is fairness and balance of information.

During her time as International Organization of Journalists’ Vice President, Alice Palmer worked with the highest levels of the Soviet propaganda machine – with the Soviet journal Izvestia, with Romesh Chandra and the World Peace Council and IOJ leaders such as Kaarle Nordenstreng and Jiri Kubka.

Alice Palmer was effectively, a Soviet “Agent of Influence.”

(more…)

Trevor Loudon

My new book, “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the United States Congress,” will be launched at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on August 20th.

Be one of the first to own this important work. You can place an order today!

Never before, has an author comprehensively exposed the extensive communist and socialist influence in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

My book aims to prove that the U.S. hasn’t got to its current state by accident.

I contend that Marxist organizations have been deliberately cultivating Congressmen and Senators in a long-term program to infiltrate and influence America’s highest legislative bodies for several decades.

But this book is not simply historical.

My meticulously documented book, includes comprehensive profiles of more than 50 serving Representatives, some of them household names, exposing their extensive ties to the U.S. far left. Though you pay them, these people are not your servants. They do the bidding of the Marxists. They promote and pass the laws the Marxists tell them to. Not the laws YOU want them to. These people truly our “Enemies Within.”

The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the United States Congress can be pre-ordered for U.S. $29.95 in the United States or Canada, or $39.95 elsewhere.

You can reserve your copy today though the KeyWiki contribute button. Please use the mailing address you would like the book sent to.

Thank you.

Trevor Loudon
Christchurch, New Zealand

Of the IRS abuse cases that have recently come to light, the use of the IRS to enforce the defunct “Fairness Doctrine” on broadcasters is one of the most disturbing.

“I am alarmed by reports that suggest a federal official at the IRS instituting a de facto Fairness Doctrine,” National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) President & CEO Dr. Frank Wright said in a press release. Wright was referring to long-time Christian radio host Dr. James Dobson revealing that his organization had to submit sample radio programs to the IRS, and that an IRS agent indicated that his criticism of President Obama would prevent his ministry from getting a certain form of non-profit status.

A press release about the controversy was issued under the headline, “IRS Subjects Dr. James Dobson and Family Talk Action to Viewpoint Discrimination.”

In other words, Dobson’s views were singled out by the IRS because they were conservative, Christian, and critical of President Obama.

The NRB notes that the Fairness Doctrine, first introduced in 1949, enabled the FCC to compel broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints on controversial issues deemed to be of public importance. It was eliminated from the Code of Federal Regulations in August 2011, though it hadn’t been enforced since 1987.Wright said the FCC “was right to purge that pernicious policy from the Code of Federal Regulations” but that, in the Dobson case, it appeared to be “alive and well at the IRS.”

In a press release under the headline, “Targeted by the IRS,” the Dobson organization, Family Talk Action, quoted Dobson as saying, “The American people deserve better treatment from its government than this. Christian ministries and others supporting the family must not be silenced or intimidated by the IRS or other branches of the government.”

In a video, Ryan Dobson described how the tax-exempt status was denied for three years because the group was deemed to be right-wing and critical of Obama. He said it was only when Family Talk Action threatened to take the IRS to court that the agency relented.

The Dobson case indicates that rather than seek to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, as many conservatives had feared, the Obama Administration and its allies used the IRS to enforce a version of the measure through federal scrutiny and intimidation of religious and conservative broadcasters.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) had warned about such an effort in our special report, “Left-Wing Censorship Campaign Targets Conservative Media,” but did not anticipate that the campaign would take the form of using the IRS rather than the FCC as a method of federal coercion and control.

AIM released a book, The Death of Talk Radio?, and a TV ad warning that liberal politicians and bureaucrats were preparing to interfere with the First Amendment right of free speech.

We had noted at the time that the “National Conference on Media Reform,” underwritten by billionaire George Soros and rich liberal foundations, was providing a platform for liberal politicians who advocated the return of the Fairness Doctrine to target conservative media and talk-radio personalities. “The only question,” we said, “is when congressional liberals will get enough nerve to aggressively push this authoritarian attempt to muzzle their political opponents.”

Now we find out that the effort which took place circumvented the congressional and legislative process and instead used the powers of the IRS.

The release from Dobson’s organization noted that the IRS reviewing agent, R. Medley, said she didn’t think the application for exemption would be granted because Family Talk Action is “not educational” and doesn’t present all views. She said Family Talk Action sounded like a “partisan right-wing group” because it only presents conservative viewpoints. According to the release, she added that the group was “political” because it “criticized President Obama, who was a candidate.”

In addition to the IRS attack on the Dobson show, AIM has also been told about a TV/radio venture, Constitution Media Network (CMN), which test marketed some of the programming and then issued a proposal for funding on December 15, 2009, but was stopped from launching by an audit notice from the IRS on December 31, 2009. The project director, Robert Vernon, said, “I knew then we were targeted. We went through pure hell with the IRS. I have never seen anything like it in my 60 years in this industry.” Vernon went through the IRS appeals process and eventually won his case, after more than a year, but CMN didn’t get off the ground as a result of the delays.

Vernon’s media project was explicitly designed to feature conservative commentators whose purpose was to “restore the United States to the Constitutional Republic that it once was,” before what was described as the “takeover” of the USA by radical socialists, communists and other “progressives.”

Vernon tells AIM that he has a satchel bag and several briefcases filled with the documents of what transpired with the IRS. “I also have legal audio recordings of all my communications/meetings with them,” he said.

“The point here is that they stopped the CMN project, put me in the poor house with their actions and claims, and no investor would assist us” because of the IRS audit process. “When I informed interested parties that I was fighting with the IRS over an audit, as you could imagine, no one wanted anything to do with us,” he said.

He said he is anxious to tell his story to Congress so that the IRS abuses can be fully explored and addressed.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

Three brewing scandals have formed a vicious trifecta which threatens to sink the Obama Administration: the Internal Revenue Services’ targeting of conservative groups, the Benghazi scandal, and the subpoena of two months of phone records from the Associated Press. The Administration’s relationship with the news media, according to The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi, has escalated from “simmering tension” to a “boil” over the last of these actions.

One might dispute the original idea of a “simmering tension” between the love-struck media and President Barack Obama. Likewise, Bob Schieffer’s reporting and other media narratives call into question that the room’s temperature has risen for the right reasons. It seems that the media are calling for more leadership, rather than for justice in the midst of these scandals.

In an effort at damage control, President Barack Obama asked acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller to resign, requested the creation of a new shield law for reporters, and released 100 pages of Benghazi emails. The first two of these actions are farces. Firstly, Steven Miller was set to retire in June. “But it turns out that Miller was subject to a term limit that would have forced him out of the job in three weeks,” report Abby Phillip and Jonathan Karl for ABC News. (Abby Phillip had previously authored a piece in which she said the IRS apology about its targeting conservatives “in some ways vindicates conservative groups that have been hounded by allegations that their activities were not completely legal,” insinuating that conservative groups somehow deserved their maltreatment at the hands of IRS agents (emphasis added).

Steven Miller had planned, before his resignation, to “go back to his job as Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement, a position that put him in charge of the tax exempt unit at the center of a scandal over targeting conservative groups,” report Phillip and Karl.

ABC News has also reported that the IRS official in charge during the targeting of “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” “9/12” and other conservative organizations, Sarah Hall Ingram, currently runs the health office of the IRS. In other words, this official is in charge of enforcing Obamacare—a revelation which justifies the connection that Republicans have made between the IRS’ partisanship and what awaits Americans under this law.

Even more telling, Ingram’s successor and the fall guy for this scandal is Joseph Grant, who was “appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.” Grant announced on May 16 that he would retire on June 3. ABC News went so far as to write that Grant “is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012.” In other words, the lady responsible for this travesty is secure in her Obamacare-related post while Grant loses his job.

One hopes that ABC has graduated past its original perspective that this debacle was merely a political opening which could be exploited by conservatives—a “controversy” rather than a real scandal. “Conservative groups have rejected an Internal Revenue Service apology for unjustifiably scrutinizing tax-exempt conservative groups during the 2012 election cycle,” reported Abby Phillip for ABC News on May 10. “The IRS apology has seemingly validated conservatives’ fears of politically motivated regulation,” she writes (emphasis added). Likewise, The New York Times covered this scandal as a political opportunity for Republicans, under the title “I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On.”

As for the shield law, The Washington Post wonders whether a media shield law would have protected the Associated Press from having two months of its phone records taken. It concludes that “Had it been law, the [Department of Justice] may well have gotten hold of the AP records anyway. But the process would have played out differently.”

“The DOJ got hold of the AP records without the wire service even knowing it happened, because the subpoena was to the phone companies instead of the journalists involved.”

Not only would such a law not have changed the outcome, the media seems to be conveniently forgetting that the Administration is at least partly to blame for the death of such legislation in its 2009 iteration. “The Obama administration has told lawmakers that it opposes legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security, according to several people involved with the negotiations,” reported Charlie Savage for The New York Times in 2009 (emphasis added). “The administration this week sent to Congress sweeping revisions to a ‘media shield’ bill that would significantly weaken its protections against forcing reporters to testify.”

And get this: “The two Democratic senators who have been prime sponsors of the legislation, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said on Wednesday that they were disappointed by the administration’s position.” This is the same Senator Schumer that the President has now reached out to revive a federal shield law. So, President Obama was against this legislation before he was for it. But don’t expect the news media to cover this fact. With a record like this, one questions whether the President intends to water-down the newest iteration of this legislation, and whether he’d even support it should it pass both houses.

“If the president wants to veto it, let him veto it,” Senator Specter said at the time. “I think it is different for the president to veto a bill than simply to pass the word from his subordinates to my subordinates that he doesn’t like the bill.”

Ironies like these beg for more than guffawing—they must lead one to question the honesty of the President’s actions.

But for Bob Schieffer of CBS News and other reporters, the real question in this is why the President is not grasping the reins and keeping track of what his subordinates are doing. This accepts the Administration’s narrative that low-level subordinates are responsible for the IRS debacle, and that Hillary Clinton was really not informed about Benghazi. “This is not the Nixon Administration, where you had burglars and people talking about blowing up the Brookings Institution. This is more a case [of] is anybody home?” said Schieffer on CBS This Morning. “I mean, somebody’s got to grab hold of this thing and I mean, it’s, it’s very very disturbing what we’re seeing here.”

Similarly, “President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency,” wrote Dana Milbank for The Washington Post. Clearly, the tension in Washington between the media and President Obama is because of what the President has not supposedly been doing—taking charge—instead of because of what his Administration has done so far.

“Certainly, a president can’t know what everybody in his administration is up to, but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone calls,” argued Milbank.

Bethany Stotts is a freelance writer, and former staff writer for Accuracy in Academia. She blogs at http://bethanystotts.wordpress.com/.

But the dam is bursting on this story. Every day the number of affected groups grows as more and more is uncovered. Today it was revealed for example that the decades-old Leadership Institute was audited in 2011. To defend itself, the institute had to shell out over $50,000 in legal fees. Run by stalwart Reagan friend Morton Blackwell, the LI has an impeccable reputation. Of course the IRS found nothing.

During the recall of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in 2012, a group called “Verify the Recall” hastily formed to check the 1 million recall petitions turned in at the last minute by union organizers. Working with True the Vote, this organization evaluated every one of those petitions in little more than a month. Other groups, including this writer, publicized their herculean efforts.

The IRS apparently didn’t like this. The North East Tarrant Texas Tea Party (NETTTP) never told the IRS they were working on the recall, yet IRS questioned them about their relationship with VTR. True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrect said, “There is no explaining this away. It is a reprehensible abuse of power by the IRS to ask one organization for information about the activities of a separate organization while holding their non-profit status hostage.”

Similarly, in 2010, the IRS demanded that an Ohio group, the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law explain in detail its “involvement with the Tea Party.” The Center provides legal counsel to Ohioans whose constitutional rights have been aggrieved, including tea party organizations and individuals. While it ultimately received its tax-exempt status, the Center said that, “IRS harassment of liberty-oriented groups, and intent to root out “tea party” activities, even through non-tea party sources such as 1851, has been in full force for a minimum of three years.”

The list of offended parties grows daily, and while Congressional Democrats are puffing and strutting about this “outrage,” many of these same politicians demanded the IRS investigate tea party and other conservative groups. That paragon of virtue, Senator Carl Levin, repeatedly demanded that the IRS look into the tax-exempt status of conservative groups in the run up to the 2012 election. Meanwhile, Senator Max Baucus, called the scandal, “an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust.” But back in 2010, when his Finance Committee asked the IRS to examine conservative groups, he dismissed Republican objections as “groundless.”

IRS bureaucrats are being blamed for this scandal, but the fact is that bureaucrats do not engage in this kind of potentially criminal behavior unless forced to do so by political leaders. There is simply too much to lose and nothing to gain, regardless their political leanings.

When however, a bureaucrat is elevated to a political position, as was Steven Miller, things change. Then, he may feel more latitude to take liberties. Even then however, there must be some kind of signal. It may not have come from Obama directly, but there is little doubt that Democratic leaders were all on the same page.

Miller was a career IRS bureaucrat. Significantly, he was formerly commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, which oversees licensing of tax-exempt organizations. Miller was the right man for the job. While not denying tax-exempt status outright, his division made it so difficult that many organizations quit. Those that stuck with it however, finally got their approvals, but for most, they came after the 2012 elections.

So this was the game all along. In 2010, Democrats got what former Florida Rep. Allen West called a “southern-fried butt whipping!” This was largely the result of effective Tea Party activism. Obama and the Democrats wanted to be sure there wasn’t a repeat performance in 2012. Through the corrupt and criminal use of the IRS, they got their way. These groups are now having no problem getting approvals. For once House Speaker John Boehner got it right: these people need jail!

The Repti Breeze from VetInternetCo.com (a little free advertising in exchange for grabbing this image)

Well, this is the picture I found, but imagine a terrarium a thousand times bigger, filled with image shifting chameleons (and the flies and maggots upon which they feed) all writhing or resting under leafy plants, for cover from the light. But see, it has walls. Consider yet, it has a door.

(Personally, I have many other duties this Spring, but I’ve put my foot in it, to: 1. provide just a few pointy points about Obama’s multifarious scandals, including but not limited to the IRS blow-up and, 2. tell what I would have a small team of Woodsteins doing, to investigate the heights, depths, and ranges of the tragic Benghazi affair, also with kind brevity.)

The first should be posted tomorrow (hint: the IRS scandal should lead well beyond Barack Obama, but also pay attention to what my superiors and I have been warning of him since before his White House residency) and the second, shortly thereafter (hint: ibid. and think Arab Spring and its own world-wide web of deceits, violence, and so many other violations). [Edit: as sometimes happens, it is taking a bit longer, perhaps Saturday for the first.]

For key, timely updates on the news of it all (and other matters) in the mean time, I heartily suggest a Twitter list that I’ve at least temporarily prepared for your public viewing. (You don’t have to have a Twitter account to view it, but unlike Facebook, I generally suggest using Twitter.)

http://twitter.com/ArlenWms/news-a-bounding

(Disclaimer: this does not necessarily include personally endorsed tweets, it will include many off-topic and personal tweets, and it does not include many excellent Tweeps tweeting their also terrific tweets. Also, a technicality: viewing this at twitter.com does not show our twitter-aided re-tweets [RT's]. And Gulag Bound is @GulagBound and I’m at @ArlenWms. )

The scandal involving the politicization of the IRS under the Obama administration continues to grow. Congressmen briefed by IRS officials say that instead of 300 groups that received closer scrutiny, the number has climbed to 471. More drip, drip, drip. But in an effort to stop the bleeding, President Obama has fired the acting commissioner, Steven Miller, who is said to have become aware in May of last year that the IRS was targeting conservative groups. He failed to tell Congress when he testified before an oversight committee in July. Whether Miller is a sacrificial lamb, a scapegoat or the true culprit remains to be seen. Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News, called the firing “a holding operation,” and “the absolute minimum he could have done.”

Now that Tea Party, Patriot, and other conservative groups know that they aren’t alone in receiving prejudicial treatment by the IRS, they are coming forward and providing more details about the reprehensible conduct of this agency. Conservative groups have told the media that the IRS asked for donor lists, Facebook conversations, copies of minutes and notes, and even lists of meeting participants.

“A Politico review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything—in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking,” write David Nather, Tarini Parti, and Byron Tau for Politico. “The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.”

“Several of the groups were asked for résumés of top officers and descriptions of interviews with the media. One group was asked to provide ‘minutes of all board meetings since your creation’” (emphasis added). For small groups, such data may not even exist.

“When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train,” reports David Martosko for the UK Daily Mail.

“It ‘should send chills through your spine that the government would ask me to identify those I teach, and to provide details of what I teach them,’” the Founder of Linchpins of Liberty, Kevin Kookogey, told the Daily Mail.

Asking for such comprehensive data from small groups such as Linchpins for Liberty accomplishes several political goals: it discourages donors, it discourages organizations, and ultimately, may cause the organization in question to fold. “Some groups even gave up in the face of the IRS questions,” reports Martosko.

“… Kookogey said a $30,000 grant was canceled as a result of the IRS’s months-long radio silence, when he couldn’t tell his donor that Linchpins had earned its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status,” writes Martosko. “That money would have made a significant difference to the group, judging from its public filings in Tennessee. In 2011, Linchpins of Liberty reported collecting just $3,460 in contributions, and spending $7,328 on its programs.” Even for larger, established groups, $30,000 in donations can make a significant difference.

Kookogey doesn’t even consider his group a Tea Party or Patriot group. “‘I’m not a Tea Party group. I’m not a Patriot group by name,’ he told NewsChannel 5 in Nashville.”

“One reason that [the IRS is] apologizing right now is that they know the investigative arm is about to take them to task—and there are whistleblowers, too, who know that this has been wrong,” Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asserted in an interview for Newsmax.

The IRS’ abuses are far reaching and extensive. USA Today reporter Gregory Korte went so far as to state that a “Tea Party moratorium” was in effect for 27 months. “In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked,” writes Korte. “That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.”

“For the 296 total political campaign intervention applications TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] reviewed as of December 17, 2012, 108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some for more than three years and crossing two election cycles),” states the IRS report issued Tuesday.

During this time period, IRS official Lois Lerner approved the tax-exempt status for Barack Obama’s half-brother’s Barack H. Obama Foundation in a single month. “Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008,” reports the Daily Caller.

This is not an outlier. “In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA Today review of IRS data shows,” writes Korte.

Yet the Administration maintains that their actions were not politically motivated. “The selection of these cases where they used the names was not a partisan selection,” said Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations, reports USA Today. “She said progressive groups were also selected for greater scrutiny based on their names, but did not provide details.”

While the media have found at least three such groups targeted for extra scrutiny, this does not offset the purposeful targeting of conservative groups. As Accuracy in Media earlier reported, 85 of the original 300 such groups contained the words “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” or “9/12” in their names. Those numbers will change now that the total number of such groups is up to 471.

Korte writes that groups such as the following were granted 501c(4) status during the “moratorium:” Bus for Progress, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, and Progress Florida.

So what exactly happens to this intrusive data once it is collected? This is the same IRS that gave investigative journalism ProPublica access to nine confidential applications of conservative groups still waiting for the exempt status to be approved. “The commendable admission [by ProPublica] lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went to during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices,” writes Wynton Hall for Breitbart.com.

Attorney General Eric Holder has asked the FBI to investigate this matter. “A federal official who has been briefed on the matter said the investigation could focus on potential violations of civil rights law, including targeting groups based on political affiliation and infringing free speech,” writes Korte for USA Today. “The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said authorities could consider possible violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts political activities of government workers.”

“At a bare minimum, those involved with this deeply offensive use of government power have committed a violation of the public trust that has already had a profoundly chilling effect on free speech,” wrote Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Rubio had called for Commissioner Miller to lose his job.

It seems that for this scandal, there is bipartisan outrage. Vernon Jordan, a close adviser to President Bill Clinton, said that “He [President Obama] needs to fire somebody. He needs action, not conversation.” Obama was apparently listening to Rubio and Jordan when he fired the commissioner, but it may not be enough.

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.

Let us return to January 21st in 2010, the day the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the Citizens United v. FEC (Federal Elections Commission) ruling was published. I will set forth, in pertinent part, portions of this U.S. Supreme Court decision that appear particularly relevant to the ongoing IRS scandal:

“[Quick facts of the case.] In January 2008, appellant Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, released a documentary (hereinafter Hillary) critical of then Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate for her party’s Presidential nomination. Anticipating that it would make Hillary available on cable television through video-on-demand within 30 days of primary elections, Citizens United produced television ads to run on broadcast and cable television. Concerned about possible civil and criminal penalties for violating Section 441b [ of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002], it sought declaratory and injunctive relief, arguing that (1) Section 441b is unconstitutional as applied to Hillary; and (2) BCRA’s disclaimer, disclosure, and reporting requirements, BCRA Sections 2201 and 311, were unconstitutional as applied to Hillary and the ads. The District Court denied Citizens United a preliminary injunction and granted appellee Federal Elections Commission (FEC) summary judgment.

“[The Decision]Held:

“1. Because the question whether Section 441b applies to Hillary cannot be resolved on other, narrower grounds without chilling political speech this Court must consider the continuing effect of speech suppression ….

“(a) [Referenced but not included for brevity as this point was found unsustainable by the Supreme Court and leading to “(b)” directly below.]

“(b) Thus, this case cannot be resolved on a narrower ground without chilling political speech, speech that is central to the First Amendment’s meaning and purpose. Citizens United did not waive this challenge to Austin [another case, citation omitted for brevity] when it stipulated to dismissing the facial challenge below, since (1) even if such a challenge could be waived, this Court may reconsider Austin and Section 441b’s facial validity here because the District Court “passed upon” the issue [case citation omitted], (2) throughout the litigation, Citizens United has asserted a claim that the FEC has violated its right to free speech; and (3) the parties cannot enter into a stipulation that prevents the Court from considering remedies necessary to resolve a claim that has been preserved. Because Citizen United’s narrower arguments are not sustainable, this Court must, in an exercise of its judicial responsibility, consider Section 441b’s facial validity. Any other course would prolong the substantial, nationwide chilling effect caused by Section 441b’s corporate expenditure ban. This conclusion is further supported by the following: (1) the uncertainty caused by the Government’s litigating position; (2) substantial time would be required to clarify Section 441b’s application on the points raised by the Government’s position in order to avoid any chilling effect cause by an improper interpretation; and (3) because speech itself is of primary importance to the integrity of the election process, any speech arguably within the reach of rules created for regulating political speech is chilled. The regulatory scheme at issue may not be a prior restraint in the strict sense. However, given its complexity and the deference courts show to administrative determinations, a speaker wishing to avoid criminal liability threats and the heavy cost of defending against FEC enforcement must ask a governmental agency for prior permission to speak. The restrictions thus function as the equivalent of a prior restraint, giving the FEC power analogous to the type of government practices that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit. The ongoing chill on speech makes it necessary to invoke the earlier precedents that a statute that chills speech can and must be invalidated where its facial invalidity has been demonstrated” — http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

I cite these portions of the Citizens United case to show why President Obama said the following on January 27th, 2010 in his State of the Union Address (where Justice Samuel Alito in the audience mouths “not true” during the “Applause”):

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

These lines of the Citizens United decision connect the Benghazi, IRS and AP stories each as scandals:

“…given its complexity and the deference courts show to administrative determinations, a speaker wishing to avoid criminal liability threats and the heavy cost of defending against FEC enforcement must ask a governmental agency for prior permission to speak. The restrictions thus function as the equivalent of a prior restraint, giving the FEC power analogous to the type of government practices that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit. The ongoing chill on speech makes it necessary to invoke the earlier precedents that a statute that chills speech can and must be invalidated where its facial invalidity has been demonstrated”

– Benghazi: a Coptic Christian, who violated his probation but was ignored for such violation, rightly or wrongly by the court (though the idea someone could sign away their Freedom of Expression seems unlikely to apply to an unalienable Right), is still in jail. However, after being blamed by the Obama Administration as creating or initiating the cause of death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith, & Glen Doherty, this man was taken in by the highest optics possible, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXqWPAlT7qg; that link demonstrating how the AP tale is a repetition of the White House’ Benghazi story, how it was taken up internationally as true, and worldwide media regurgitating the responsibility for the protests on September 11, 2012 being the youtube trailer for the unfinished video made by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an exercise of Free Speech being chilled by a government sponsored lie originated during a political campaign. Consider, regarding Nakoula Basseley, “ the deference courts show to administrative determinations, a speaker wishing to avoid criminal liability threats and the heavy cost of defending against FEC enforcement…” which is what has happened to him now that the power and personnel of the U.S. Government was put in motion to bring to light his violation of probation; apparently establishing the idea that one must “ask a governmental agency for prior permission to speak” or be subjected to this type of heavy-handed National Government interference in our lives and the local criminal justice system as well.

– AP: Where 2 months of phone records are taken up from reporters without any explanation but “national security interest,” later explained as a “balance,” to controlling leaks of national security secrets. Yet everyone acknowledges this is unprecedented, while Attorney General Holder who knows nothing of the case or paperwork as he recused himself, tells us he is sure it was all done to the exact requirements and specifications of the Department of Justice that he heads.

– And then we have the IRS, who somehow, according to the Inspector General’s Report, “…. used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention… Although the processing of some applications with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months. This was due to delays in receiving assistance from the Exempt Organizations function Headquarters office. For the 296 total political campaign intervention applications TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] reviewed as of December 17th, 2012, 108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some for more than 3 years and crossing two election cycles)…

“More than 20 months after the initial case was identified, processing the case began in earnest. Many organizations received requests for additional information from the IRS that included unnecessary, burdensome questions (e.g. lists of past and future donors). The IRS later informed some organizations that they did not need to provide previously requested information….” — http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf

Unable to seek out donors and complete their political organization on time, the speech of these Tea Party organizations (and others though I merely used the highlights for brevity) was, as the U.S. Supreme Court puts it, “chilled.”

Conclusions

Understand that this IRS Inspector General report, showing that applicants were waiting more than 3 years for their 501 (c) (4) exemption to be granted, coincidentally shows this IRS targeting practice started about the time Citizens United had finished their last argument (September 9, 2009) and the U.S. Supreme Court had determined but not published their ruling.

Thus, I submit to any and all who read this, that there appears to have been a leak of the final U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, months before the opinion was published. Otherwise, President Obama’s grandstanding criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court, if he wasn’t apprised of the decision by a leak, set the tone of the IRS, from the Commissioner on down, as to devising a means to offset what the President saw as the negative outcome of the Citizens United decision. President Obama reminds us regularly that he is the President, the leader of the executive branch, and for whom the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and all those under him work. Therefore the entire blame and requirement of accountability rests with President Obama, whether he knew about the IRS targeting of Tea Party and Conservative groups or not doesn’t matter.

Make emphatic note that in each of the above scandals this is about the power of government in affecting speech, seeking to be the arbiters of rightful and wrongful use of our Freedom of Expression whether we want them to or not.

No matter who is targeted, be it Tea Party Conservatives, the Press being probed for leaking national security secrets, or a voter and taxpayer, who affords the authority and cost of Ambassador Chris Stevens to represent the interests of the United States abroad and yet is denied knowing the reason for his and 3 other American’s deaths and is instead being told an untrue story about a video, we must, in all sobriety, recognize these scandals appear to demonstrate that our government has made an actual effort to perpetuate and subject us to, as the Supreme Court put it, “the type of government practices that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit.”

I thank you for reading and hope you send this to every Congressman and Senator you can, for an assault on the First Amendment of this magnitude is a coup against We the People and the self-government by representation that is informed by our Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression. For this American, there is no “balance” or “balanced approach” to limit my exercise of my unalienable Rights from God.

Toddy Littman

The revelations about the IRS targeting voices opposed to Barack Obama’s political agenda came of no surprise to filmmaker Joel Gilbert. His private financial accounts were hacked into and the information used by a George Soros-linked journalist, Seth Rosenfeld, before the presidential election. Gilbert wants to know who provided Rosenfeld with his private bank records. Was it someone at the IRS? Or at the White House?

Gilbert directed the blockbuster film, “Dreams from My Real Father,” which was heavily criticized by the left before the November 2012 presidential election because of the Obama campaign’s fear it could alert voters to Obama’s communist connections and Marxist philosophy. The film featured evidence that Obama’s real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA operative who indoctrinated Obama into a Marxist ideology during his formative years in Hawaii.

Gilbert was interviewed extensively on radio and television, as well as by major newspapers such as The New York Times, which apparently feared the film would have an impact on the election outcome. His announcement of a promotional campaign to send millions of DVDs for free to various states was of major concern to Obama’s backers in the media.

We noted in our pre-election story, Last Minute Anti-Romney Dirty Tricks Target Filmmaker, that the invasion of Gilbert’s privacy seemed to be an attack on donors to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, since some of them had also contributed to the distribution of Gilbert’s film.

In addition to the scrutiny of his donors, Gilbert tells AIM that in early 2012, the IRS reopened his 2009 tax return, and simply denied all of his business expenses, even though they were well-documented. “My accountant said he had never seen anything like it in 30 years of experience with the IRS,” he told AIM. “To resolve the issue, my accountant met the IRS auditor in Los Angeles, and reported that she had a print-out of the home page of the “Dreams from My Real Father” official film website on her desk. Despite the resubmission of the 2009 expenses, the IRS has still not closed the case, and my accountant continues to meet with them every few months. The next meeting is set for May 19th.”

He says, “I believe I have been illegally targeted by the IRS because my films and interviews have run contrary to President Obama’s official narrative of who he is and what his policies really are for America. The fact that the IRS targeted me indicates they were afraid of me and the information in my film.”

It was in late October of 2012 that the scrutiny of his customers came to light. He says, “…unknown parties illegally acquired private company bank information, and it was passed on to left-wing journalist Seth Rosenfeld, who began targeting my customers who purchased large quantities of the “Dreams from My Real Father” DVD, as well as a limited partner.”

Rosenfeld works for the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), funded by the pro-Marxist billionaire George Soros. Accuracy in Media named the CIR as being among an extensive network of Soros-supported media organizations in our 2004 report, The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power.

Rosenfeld denied that he engaged in any improper or illegal conduct.

But Gilbert says, “The bank information could only be accessed by the IRS or from my corporate bank account with a confidential user ID and password. On October 26th, Seth Rosenfeld called me directly and began citing bank deposit amounts that he purported to be bank wire transfers received in my company bank account, and asked what they were used for. I was so shocked that he claimed to have confidential bank information, I asked him to send an email and hung up, but no email was received.”

Gilbert goes on: “Next, Rosenfeld called a company limited partner on his private number and fraudulently introduced himself as being with the Romney campaign and asked for a donation. When the partner said he wasn’t interested, Rosenfeld admitted to being a reporter and began citing the partner’s confidential bank wiring history. The partner hung up. Next, Rosenfeld called the elderly mother of a customer who had purchased a large quantity of DVDs by check. Rosenfeld tricked the woman into giving out her son’s home phone number by pretending to be an old friend. When Rosenfeld called the customer, Rosenfeld cited the amount of the check, and asked about his political beliefs, and asked by name whether he knew others who made purchases from my company.”

Finally, Gilbert says a major buyer of DVDs was contacted by Rosenfeld on his private unlisted cell phone number. “Again, Rosenfeld cited the customer’s transfer amount to my company, asked what it was for, and asked him to detail his political opinions and any donations to Republican campaigns, including Romney’s,” he says. “Finally, Rosenfeld called my DVD replicator on her private number, but she hung up, as I had forewarned her that Rosenfeld’s campaign might be coming her way.”

“Dreams from My Real Father” was Gilbert’s most recent film on Obama. He also produced the 2010 award winning “Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad’s Coming War and Obama’s Politics of Defeat.”

Based on the evidence in his and other cases coming to light, Gilbert says he believes there is a “criminal conspiracy” that used the IRS “to target the First Amendment rights of Americans,” and that President Obama and other high-level officials should be targets of the investigation into the admitted wrongdoing.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

You would have thought that the Obama administration would have learned from the growing Benghazi scandal that the best way to handle such controversies is to get out in front of them, and put it all out there, rather than let it drip, drip, drip, as is now happening with the recent IRS blowup.

According to The Washington Post, based on documents it obtained from a congressional aide, the Internal Revenue Service has targeted and singled out for added scrutiny, groups applying for tax-exempt status which have made statements that “criticize how the country is being run” and that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

If so, this IRS scandal could well be an abuse of power by the executive branch, reflecting one of the issues that was an article of impeachment drawn up for then-President Richard Nixon, before he resigned.

“Lois G. Lerner, the IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, said the ‘absolutely inappropriate’ actions by ‘front-line people’ were not driven by partisan motives,” reports The Washington Post.

“Does anyone actually believe this?” asks Joe Klein of Time Magazine. “But I don’t think Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon,” writes Klein. “In this specific case, he now is.”

In 1998, when liberal journalists such as Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, and Lars-Erik Nelson of The New York Daily News said that President Clinton should resign in the wake of revelations about lying to the country about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, it foreshadowed the impeachment that would occur several months later. And though 50 U.S. senators voted to remove him from office, the requirement was for two-thirds of the Senate, and Clinton remained in office to complete his second term.

When a liberal Obama enthusiast like Joe Klein starts comparing Obama to Richard Nixon, that spells trouble.

President Obama announced on Monday at his joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron that he had not heard of the scandal until it made major news last Friday, following Lerner’s public statement, which seemed inadvertent. The Washington Post said that “it appeared to have happened by chance when Lerner, appearing Friday at a conference held by the American Bar Association, responded to a question about the allegations by conservative groups.” When asked later why she announced it, she said that she “heard it was going to be leaked on Friday.”

So what exactly happened with the IRS, and when? The New York Times has published a timeline which covers from March 2010 to May 2012, and outlines the changing criteria that the IRS Determinations Unit employees used to refer applications for extra scrutiny.

In March and April 2010 the unit “began searching for requests for tax exemption involving the Tea Party, Patriots, 9/12” and “political sounding names” such as “We the People” or “Take Back the Country,” according to The New York Times. In July 2011, after concerns were raised, the definition was made more generic and the politicization was removed.

But in January 2012, these criteria were again highly politicized to target “Political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, social economic reform/movement” (emphasis added). The criteria were supposedly corrected to be less political starting in May 2012.

May 2012 is also when, as ABC News reported, the current acting IRS commissioner, who was then deputy commissioner, was aware of these actions by the agency. ABC called it a “controversy” on their evening news on Monday, while both NBC and CBS led the news with the story and called it a “scandal.”

In all, about 300 applications were referred for special scrutiny. Of these 300 organizations, 85 were flagged for having the words “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their name, while 11 more had “9/12” in their name. “So far, none of those applications have been rejected, although some have been withdrawn,” reports ABC News (emphasis added). According to the Post, 130 out of the 300 organizations have had their tax-exempt status approved, while 25 have withdrawn their applications.

Ms. Lerner, who is “three rungs down” from the commissioner, argues that this inappropriate targeting of conservative groups was conducted by low-level officials at the Cincinnati office. However, it isn’t just rogue agents or officials, which the news media accounts might have superficially left readers to believe. According to the Associated Press, “Lerner said the number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400.”

“To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.” In other words, it was the central office that was mishandling tax exemption applications.

Left-leaning news organizations such as ABC News and The New York Times would like this scandal to go away for the Administration. Thus, they have generally cast their reporting as if there is no scandal—as if this is all Republican or conservative bluster. “Conservative groups have rejected an Internal Revenue Service apology for unjustifiably scrutinizing tax-exempt conservative groups during the 2012 election cycle,” reports Abby Phillip for ABC News. “The IRS apology has seemingly validated conservatives’ fears of politically motivated regulation.” The bias, in fact, seems pretty clear.

During the press conference last Friday, Ms. Lerner stated that there was no political bias, but was unable to name any liberal groups or associated words that were targeted. She also wouldn’t say at first whether anyone was being disciplined, then “appeared to say there was no disciplinary action, then went back to saying she wouldn’t comment.” And as to how she found out about the wrongdoing, “Lerner said the investigation stemmed from media reports about conservative groups claiming that they were targeted, not from any internal review.”

That same day, White House spokesman Jay Carney called the actions “inappropriate.” The IRS has officially apologized, and House Republicans will be holding Congressional hearings regarding the matter later this week. The Post has reported that the IRS lied repeatedly about it when asked by members of Congress. And even some Democrats are voicing their disapproval: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said, “The actions of the IRS are unacceptable and un-American.” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said there is “No excuse for ideological discrimination in our system.” Outgoing Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) called it an “Outrageous abuse of power and breach of the public’s trust.”

But, for Abby Phillip, “The rare apology in some ways vindicates conservative groups that have been hounded by allegations that their activities were not completely legal.” Such reporting is meant to turn the head on conservative groups and insinuate that they deserved to be targeted.

The New York Times is also pushing the idea that this is about Republicans bashing the Administration, rather than a real story. “Since last year’s elections, Republicans in Congress have struggled for traction on their legislative efforts, torn between conservatives who drove the agenda after their 2010 landslide and new voices counseling a shift in course to reflect President Obama’s re-election and the loss of Republican seats in the House and the Senate,” write Jonathan Weisman and Matthew L. Wald in a New York Times article entitled “I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On.” You see, it’s the Republicans who are playing politics here, not the Administration.

“But the accusations of I.R.S. abuse are sure to fuel an effort that appears to be uniting dispirited Republicans and their conservative political base: investigating Mr. Obama and his administration,” continue Weisman and Wald. Such reporting insinuates that the Administration does not deserve to be investigated for targeting its political opponents with the government apparatus.

As it is, the IRS scandal may not just be limited to Tea Partiers or patriotic organizations. It may also include pro-Israel organizations, as well. “The IRS required that Jewish organization [Z Street] to state ‘whether [it] supports the existence of the land of Israel,’ and also demanded the organization ‘[d]escribe [its] religious belief system toward the land of Israel,’” according to Lori Lowenthal Marcus with the Jewish Press. Lowenthal Marcus is the founder of Z Street, which is currently suing the IRS.

This scandal isn’t about to go away.

Investor’s Business Daily recalled “a chilling memo from Nixon White House counsel John Dean in 1971 describing how ‘we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.’ Dean emphasized that ‘a low visibility of the project is imperative.’ The Watergate break-in seemed low level, but relentless reporting found it led to the top. Within 27 months a presidency was toppled.

“We know the Obama administration is capable of misusing the IRS. In 2010, an attorney for donors Charles and David Koch told the Weekly Standard of a senior Obama aide telling reporters that the Kochs ‘do not pay corporate income tax’ through their firm. He wondered how the White House got his clients’ private information from the IRS.”

National Review editorialized that “This episode is not the only reason we have had to question the rectitude of the IRS’s conduct in recent years. Somehow, Mitt Romney’s tax returns managed to be leaked, as did documents from American Crossroads, the organization associated with Republican strategist Karl Rove.”

They added, “The misuse of confidential IRS documents is a crime, and a serious one. To target individuals and organizations because of their political and religious beliefs is a serious offense to our constitutional order. To use federal employees, offices, and records to do so is the misappropriation of government funds and other resources.”

President Obama claimed he didn’t know about this until last Friday. At his press conference on Monday, he said, “I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday.” As Joe Klein asked, “Does anyone actually believe this?”

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.